(Reuters) – North Korea has been suspended from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) until the end of 2022, meaning it will miss out on the Beijing Winter Games, after failing to send a team to the Tokyo Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach said on Wednesday.
“The National Olympic Committee of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is suspended until the end of the year 2022 as a result of its unilateral decision not to participate (in Tokyo),” Bach told a news conference.
Bach said the decision meant the North Korean Olympic Committee would not receive financial support during the suspension and would definitively forfeit support that had previously been withheld due to sanctions.
The IOC chief said the IOC did reserve the right to make decisions on any individual North Korean athletes who qualify for Beijing 2022 and to reconsider the duration of the country’s suspension.
(Reporting by Simon Evans, editing by Ed Osmond)
